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War Z capitalized on the hype generated by the Day Z mod, and now that it’s live on Steam gamers are angry over what appears to be false advertising of the game’s features.

When I first heard of The War Z I assumed it was a standalone sequel to the popular mod Day Z. I was wrong. The game is a new IP from Hammerpoint Interactive that appears to be little more than a rip-off of the Day Z mod (and sounded eerily familiar to the book World War Z and its upcoming film adaptation.)

The zombie genre has lots of games, of course, but the premise of the two games is simply far too similar to be a coincidence, though Hammerpoint claims the game went into development prior to Day Z’s sudden rise to fame and popularity.

Cash Grab

Since War Z went into beta, it’s been confronted with plenty of rounds of controversy.

A video producer at the website Just Press Start bought into the beta and was promptly banned the next day. There was no reason for the ban, and when he attempted to contact the company he was greeted with a cookie-cutter response—from a company that was not Hammerpoint but instead “Xsolla Support, a company known for payment transaction services.”

Apparently hundreds of other beta players were hit with the same ban at the same time and received the same cookie-cutter response, leading to outright revolt on the game’s official forums which apparently have no paid community manager.

Making matters worse, screenshots on the official game’s website were confirmed to be staged rather actual in-game footage.

As if all that isn’t bad enough, the entire project appears to be ripped from another game that War Z executive producer, Sergey Titov, was also involved with, War Inc.

Here’s a screenshot comparison that’s found its way online showing just how disturbingly similar the two games are:

Titov is the former managing technical director at Riot Games, the company behind League of Legends. He’s also the founder of Arktos Entertainment Group which acquired Hammerpoint in the very early days of War Z development, though no information about that acquisition or involvement in the game exists on the company’s website.

As is the case with stories such as these, things only get worse from here.

False Advertising

The game released on Steam earlier this week and quickly became the store’s best seller. But gamers quickly realized that something was wrong.

Now Hammerpoint is being accused of false advertising and defrauding customers; and while these allegations are often leveled at games for the pithiest of reasons, this appears to be a case where the complaints are well founded.

The original store page for the game on Steam listed a number of features that were not included in the game, including multiple maps of massive scale, ranging from 100 to 400 square kilometers. It listed servers with “up to 100 players.”

There is only one map which measures 72 square kilometers [Titov disputes this number.] There are also no available skills, a feature Titov says are coming soon. And game servers were, at least originally, capped at 50 players rather than the promised 100.

The game, which beta players forked over as much as $25 for, was priced at $14.99 on Steam, and includes micro-transactions. You wouldn’t know this if you read the game’s description on its official website, however, which reads:

Forget subscriptions, forget paid DLC and expansion packs.

The War Z is as simple as this – once you install the game to your computer, you will be able to get into the game quickly and play without worrying about subscription fees, no hidden fees, and no paid updates. All updates will be seamlessly delivered to you free of charge when they’re released.

Add AAA graphics and effects mixed with the ability to run even on integrated video cards or low end laptops and you have a unique, fun, experience that is available to everyone.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is….

GameSpy’s Dan Stapleton chatted with the aforementioned Sergey Titov to ask him about allegations of false advertising, asking some very straightforward questions about the blatant falsehoods presented on the Steam page.

Titov beats around the bush mostly, claiming that “up to 100″ players can mean anything between zero and 100, and writing that “I’m sure there’ll be people who will look into small details and will say “no I was mislead,” where in fact they imagined something to themselves without checking details first.”

Titov also claims that the first map, which he says is over 100 square km, falls into the “100 to 400″ kilometer category, and that online games are always getting new content so the claim that there are multiple areas is not false, even though there is only one map available at this time.

Blame Somebody

In an apology Titov posted following the interview he continued to blame customers for misreading the Steam page rather than admitting and owning up to the misleading language and false promises.

War Z appears to be the congregation of all the worst aspects of gaming: players say it’s boring and isn’t the game that it was advertised as; the textures are low-quality and the graphics are largely ripped from another previously released game; and while you pay to purchase the game, it utilizes a freemium model of micro-transactions, including items that disappear when you die (never mind the inherent problems with applying this model to a survival horror game.)

Many people are criticizing Valve for what is obviously an unfinished product showing up in their store. The problem appears to be a simple one. Because the game’s publisher had a game on Steam previously, their new titles can skip the review process, giving The War Z a free pass through the back door.

Valve may need to reconsider this policy in light of War Z‘s numerous problems, especially since many gamers will certainly demand a refund.

As Titov points out, the refund process is going to fall on Valve’s lap, noting that “it’s up to Steam to decide if they provide or not refunds.”

More to come as this unfolds. I’ve reached out to Valve for comment.

Valve’s Doug Lombardi responded to my request for comment in an email, writing:

From time to time a mistake can be made and one was made by prematurely issuing a copy of War Z for sale via Steam. We apologize for this and have temporary removed the sale offering of the title until we have time to work with the developer and have confidence in a new build. Those who purchase the game and wish to continue playing it via Steam may do so. Those who purchased the title via Steam and are unhappy with what they received may seek a refund bycreating a ticket at our support site here: https://support.steampowered.com/newticket.php

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What a remarkably ignorant comment, you do realize dayz is a mod and warz is a actually game, only company that has the right to go after them legally would be arma 2, and get this, they can’t because the product warz is releasing is only similar to the dayz mod also not to mention warz went into alpha and released first, if anyone would have the right to look to sew it would fall on warz to sew dayz to dissolve or change there name, ext become a official game, ext. (next time you post don’t post without reading first, but then again you probably will disregard all of this won’t you i figure you are the typical dayz fan boy who will seak out any hate he can and help expand it, my words are likely wasted but in the small change they are not, my last bit of advice, is to read real articles instead of trash ones as this one is which is one sided.)

Your comment is completely invalid. John only agreed with the article and said that he hope’d DayZ would destroy WarZ, by destroy he doesn’t mean legal action he means popularity and income made. Btw DayZ standalone GAME was announced well before your comment it was even mentioned by Sergey Titov that he released alpha around the same time the standalone for War Z was announced.

Secondly, you need to get some facts straight Arma 2 isn’t a company, BIS Bohemia Interactive Studio are the creators of the Arma series. Dean Hall aka Rocket is actually an employee of the studio, he created the mod in his spare time for his own enjoyment and it got popular.

Neither company Arktos nor BIS have too much ground to sue each other as the games use separate art assets and game engines (i.e. no copy & paste) and both will argue that their games are different despite sharing themes. The closest case would be for BIS who could appeal that the War Z is a copycat of Day Z’s trademark & the intent to use aka intellectual property is similar.

Another company/studio that could get in on the action would be Online Warmongers as they were the creators of the original War Inc. Where War Z has blatantly copied art assets and more from. However it’s sketchy here too because OW are/were part of Arktos and have probably signed their IP over to them.

Because a game made it to “launch” (and I say launch with quotes because it was a shocking disappointment for many people) quicker doesn’t mean that it has the right of way. It depends more so on documentation of original ideas.

“my words are likely wasted but in the small change they are not, my last bit of advice, is to read real articles instead of trash ones as this one is which is one sided.”

–Your words are wasted, they never meant much to begin with. –You should probably take your own advice and see the facts.

Also, I only found out tonight that Sergey Titov the face of War Z was also the man behind Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. The worst rated game of all time and a truly appalling thing to place a price tag on, despite his apologies I will never hold respect for him.

yes, anyone who has played dayz and warz(surprisingly small number from the stats i have read), cernarus(dayz world) takes very noticably longer to traverse at around 170 square kilometers.

and i also want to touch on the statement that players say the game is boring. while i dont agree with the marketing tactics at all, that is simply not accurate. i would say i am bored in its current state, but i have also played at least 60 hours over the past 2 months. so to be fair, the game itself is not the worst especially considering the horribly incomplete state. i find it is more said out of frustration. with these issues, as well as the fact it is a challenging game at times, i think people get a bit carried away with the negativity.

Is there something wrong with you ? Its people like you and many of the warz fans that let ‘games’ like this happen. The lies were there from the beginning and some simply chose not to believe them. Hopefully a lot of current gen gamers were burned badly enough that are now more picky before they start mindlessly throwing their money at the screen.

If you don’t like it thats your deal. I like WarZ. I still play it with friends, and look forward to more content. People are going to have different opinions on if a game is good or not, and though I know the devs have done some stupid things so far, The game is what matters to me, as well as all those other people that are still playing.

I think the most sickening fact is that a lot of consumers are being blatantly mislead into thinking that this is the highly-anticipated DayZ standalone release. In fact the Steam search returns WarZ when DayZ is entered into the search bar.

Actually, that’s not true. Because of the weird search system for Steam, if you search for “dayz” it will return a result for War Z. If you use “Day Z” “DayZ” or “day z” it will not return results for The War Z.

I very much enjoy War Z for what it is, but still have concerns regarding development and transaction model etc. However. having concerns doesnt mean a sudden urge to channel all my rage and fury towards this game on multiple forums. The energy from the Day Z fanboys is unlimited. Golf-clap.

I’ll definitely go check out the Day Z stand alone, and meanwhile just having fun with war z.

your facts are pretty spot on from someone who has been following this and playing since day one, and read the gamespy article. one thing i wanted to correct, I paid $30 for a pre order, which was at the time said to be a DISCOUNT. now its down to what, $13 or $14? one of many cases of being misled, we are just scratching the surface in this article. another worth noting is charging money for in game transactions like ammo which this guy stated would never happen, as in thos sort of game its a ridiculous advantage to one willing to throw money at them. also see no mention here of the fact not only on their forums, but now on the steam forums they are banning people and deleting topics for posting negative comments about their game. so pretty happy to see it getting some public uncensorable exposure this morning. whats sad is the game did/does have potential. this guy is running it straight into the ground.

But I will say this, the textures ARE low-res, and the foliage looks absolutely terrible. Everything looks decent from a distance, and the game has some impressive scenic vistas, but man up-close is a different story.

Opinions are opinions though. And in my opinion, low-res textures looks like crap no matter what. Low-res textures covered up by a ton of post-processing effects like in WarZ just makes it look like shiny crap, along with the overexposed color scheme to give everything more vibrant colors.

I’ve been playing WarZ for about two months now. I purchased the $60 legendary package. For that $60 I received, a copy of the game, $30 worth of private server rental, and $30 worth of in game currency. We also received other bonuses, such as an additional $20 in game currency, and content unlocked for free for all beta users. So I’m okay with people on Steam paying $15, and getting nothing more then the game. As for for Titov making promises about the game that were untrue, well yeah he over sold it. The problem is that everyone’s acting like these are things the WarZ will never have. If you look at the timeline you’d see 99% of the promised thing will be in game in about 3 weeks. Was it wrong? Yes. Does it mean WarZ is a scam? No.

Yes WarZ used War inc data. It’s built on the War inc engine. This is common practice in the gaming field. It’s hardly a scam, and barely note worthy. WarZ is NOT a scam. I’ve been playing for months, and over that time I’ve seen the Devs put plenty of work into updating. This game is constantly evolving. This entire thing is just a matter of Titov jumping the gun, and releasing the game on Steam about a month to soon. It was a dumb move, but hardly deserving of the irrational response it’s yielded. There has been so much misinformation about this game. Tons of youtube videos, and blogs where DayZ fanboys do everything in their power to crush WarZ. It’s become a joke on the WarZ forums.

Here’s the really sad part. Were on Forbes right now. This is a respected name in journalism. I am truly disappointed in such an established news organization for jumping on the sensationalism, and rumors about WarZ. I can only assume the “journalist” responsible for this article was finding an outlet for his frustrations while waiting for DayZ stand alone to be released.

This game has had so much controversy surrounding it, it’s no wonder it’s considered a scam. They released it in an unfinished state, closer to a beta or an even an alpha release, but claimed it was a completed product. There is no misunderstanding what was put in the Steam Store, unless someone can’t read properly, and the original claims about the game included mostly false information. Only after hitting number one on the sales chart (and receiving a ton of negative publicity) did they go back and rewrite the description to more accurately reflect the unfinished state of the game. Thanks to Forbes for shining a light on this despicable business practice!

This is one of the most sensible posts ever about this game. I have tried to say the same thing countless times on Gamespy, the forums, Ign, etc. All I get is “LOL scam” posts and saying how I am a fan boy. I really do not understand the unwarranted hatred of this game. The developers have jumped the gun a few times, but it is not, in anyway, a scam. In fact, it is rather fun.

lol, keep encouraging developers that lie to you, you are the ones who let underhanded lieing developers continually get away with this sort of thing. If any of you had looked at Titovs track record and still brought the game then nothing is going to help you. Good ‘game’ ? its a rip off all around from day one full of false promises and riddled with lies.

Well with the extreme aggression you seem to have against WarZ, its hard to believe you are anything but a DayZ fanboy.

The rumors they he speaks of are mostly in the beginning, claiming it was a rippoff of DayZ. This is a rumor, not a fact. The game has supposedly been in the works since before DayZ even came out, but ideas from DayZ were used in WarZ(which is smart for game developers to use what works).

WarZ and DayZ take the same idea and use it in different ways. DayZ supremely realistic, WarZ, more arcade style. Its like saying Infamous ripped off prototype vise/versa because they both explore the idea of a super being in a sandbox.

As far as “ripping off World War Z” their name “WarZ” comes from War Inc + Z(common letter used in place of actually saying zombie). Its a simple equation.

The artical was overall VERY poor as it was supremely biased in its take on matters. Rather then simply deliver the facts, it slammed them down and made it seem as if it were a conspiracy of sorts by the WarZ devs.

My end point on the matter is that its not a big deal. Yeah, they have done poorly in the public relations sector by pulling multiple mistakes(though the steam issue is the biggest “woops” so far) But WarZ has been called out harder then almost any other game due to ONE reason, which is the similarity to DayZ, and the DayZ fanboys going ape shit over it, such as the Rhinocrunch videos that gained so much popularity through slander.

I play DayZ, and I enjoy it, I play WarZ, and I enjoy it as well. As gamers, it should be simple as if you like it or not, rather then a crap flinging contest.

The thing is, a lot of the anger is actually coming from people who paid money for WarZ and felt ripped off. Whether they are or were fans of DayZ is irrelevant.

A lot of people still like the game well enough, and there’s nothing wrong with that, I just don’t see myself ever supporting the devs. Even the words that come out of Sergey’s mouth are self-incriminating even if you discount the other stuff that’s not 100% proven.

My issue stems more from the fact that a lot of the defenders of WarZ tend to respond with “You’re just a DayZ fanboy” like that’s somehow supposed to magically invalidate the original argument. But I guess name-calling is just the nature of the internet.

I Like this game, yes the developers should be more honest about the current state of the game. This game is far from a scam, Items don’t disappear when you die, they merely fall onto the ground and someone else may pick them up. Solution: Log back into the same server and hunt and the kill the jerk lol.

Many people are complaining but most people who voice themselves in any customer service situation are negative. 9 out 10 customers are happy, let the 1 get their refund and stop the whining.

There’s a reason it isn’t anywhere near as popular as DayZ, because the customers are not happy with how it is. Of course, the people who bought it are happy, but everyone else that doesn’t like it is not, and it is a detriment to just ride coattails.

Well written, i go by user name Pixel_Pro and have been appauled by this “practice” and have uncovered many lies ( i have links ) and ugly truths surrounding War Z but primarily seems to stem from one sorce, Sergey.

He has also been begging users on the forum for good reviews/scores on metacritic, asking his own fan base for which he claimed had a 93 perecnt approval rating, have you checked metcritic lately? I have been up for hours chatting with other steam users who, like myself, have been outraged and uncovering more “dark clouds” within the development of War Z and past hsitory ( ref Big rigs 2)

You know that most people who are happy with content and satisfied typically rarely go to forums or report good things? That’s Customer Service 101, obviously you don’t work in that professional realm.

This was taken from Reddit in regards of their refund process that so many people have ran into.

“You must submit a support ticket at support.thewarz.com and have your case reviewed. They don’t want you going through Steam support to get a refund, they want you to go to their site where, after accepting their new TOS, you are no longer entitled to a refund, while they laugh all the way to the bank. That’s called fraud by the way”

Here’s the link for a huge summary of all the things that are going on. You can see for your selves what the gamers are saying about this issue. http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/152tbh/warz_patch_unleash_the_true_moneywhoring/

You think this is bad? I bought into the beta…for $40. Not $25, not $15, but $40. And that’s back when they were advertising vehicles, an “advanced” medical system, and weapons crafting.

Do you think Sergey will refund my $40? Do think anyone will even respond to my request? Fat chance. If you bought the game on steam, consider yourself lucky. I hope Valve takes Sergey to court and sinks Hammerpoint Interactive.

Again, Forbes proves it self as an honest gaming news source. Which lately its sad to see Forbes outshines professional gaming news outlets due to their bias because of the ‘Pay to Play’ reviews.

There was so much false advertising here it’s not even funny and the response to the customers has been very Biowareish to where you have a group of Stanley Woo like clones who literally banned over 3,000 people in one day. Wow!

Now they are trying to muzzle me, i never made any kind nor would i ever make death threats,omg

You have been banned from all The War Z discussions until Dec 26, 2012 @ 3:56pm. You were banned by Zefar. Reason: “Don’t throw death threats back at users. It’s against the rules 1 week temp ban.” this is too much,lol

The War Z seems rather fishy and I’m glad I didn’t buy it. All this is pretty odd and I would never buy the game after seeing all this but I still doubt it is a scam. There are so many connections from this game to others, like War Inc and to other companies attached to the project that a scam would ruin everyones reputation. Scams rarely last long and then the truth is out there. I do believe there must be some passion for the project in the team but all this behaviour of banning people, silencing peoples voice on forums, all that does not really help their case.

I don’t want to sound like I’m defending the game because I’m not, but things like this aren’t always 100% one sided evil, there is usally some nuance to the story which is why I’m a bit dissapointed since this article is pretty one dimensional with one angle. Perhaps some neutrality. All this happened so quick and everyone jumps on the bandwagon to report on the same issue from the same side. I’m just wondering when a mistake happens and everyone accuses someone for something they are not. This is probably more of a journalstic thing than a War Z thing though.

I’m still glad this article is here though since many seem to be dissapointed and now Steam are offering refunds.

Forbes Games usually is good about giving perspective on both sides and nuanced look at things so this article felt a bit weird to read. I know articles like this can be like catharsis for some people but it feels like it sort of belongs on another site other than Forbes. It does feel a bit sensationalist. The gaming journalism press has a tendency to jump on every small bit of controversy and chew it up as fast as it can.

Just my two cents though! Still, keep up the good work. Love reading on this site!

Yet people , gamers , are still backing Sergey. I am ashamed to see these so called gamers speak out in defense of him and his rippoffware. Disgusting Sergey , you will reap what you have sown, and i hope it hits you tenfold.

Make sure you’re checking the commenting history of people who defend War Z. Not sure about Forbes, but a lot on Steam and a few other news orgs are brand new accounts with only positive comments about War Z. Ditto on Metacritic.

I don’t think people are defending Sergey so much as they are defending the team and the honest people on it. I heard there are some good folks in there and it’s sad that honest people will have their reputation on the line because some jerk did something like this.

Games aren’t made by one person or one will and that should be noted, but yeah, Sergey seems to be the big villian here though. Big Rigs was… Pretty darn terrible and I do not know how he mainted his rep after letting that game go for commercial retail release.